In the 28 years since South Park premiered, hundreds of its TV comedy peers have come and gone. But even the ones with similar longevity don’t have S
In the 28 years since South Park premiered, hundreds of its TV comedy peers have come and gone. But even the ones with similar longevity don’t have South Park’s continued impact. Comedy Central’s foul-mouthed animated sitcom affirmed this again last month when it abruptly returned to air after a bitter streaming-rights renegotiation that got wrapped up in the elongated closing of the merger between Skydance Media and the show’s parent company, Paramount. The season premiere, “Sermon on the ’Mount,” debuted within 24 hours of creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone publicly signing a five-year, $1.5 billion deal with Paramount. The episode also called out the company directly and sharply, ripped into the recent cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and went after President Donald Trump like the show never had before.
South Park recast Trump as Satan’s jealous, disingenuous, delusional lover—a up-to-date spin on the show’s elderly take on Saddam Hussein, a character that most famously headlined the 1999 film South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. That bit of nostalgia cut deep as the premiere mocked Trump over his global tariff proposals, the furor surrounding the unreleased Epstein files, and, uh, the size of his penis. The White House responded with insults, as Parker and Stone surely hoped it would: “The left’s hypocrisy truly has no end—for years they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ‘offense’ content, but suddenly they are praising the show,” a Trump spokesperson said in a statement to Variety. “Just like the creators of South Park, the left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows. This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”
Of course, the literal White House lashing out at a TV show does imply a certain degree of relevancy. But those clamoring for a swift encore did not get one. Last week, Comedy Central released a South Park teaser that both announced the season’s second episode would not air until tonight, and assured us that in it, Parker and Stone will not go any easier on Trump—the clip gave a brief glimpse of the show’s Trump character feeling up Satan’s thigh under a dining table. It’s doubtful the White House enjoyed that either. Even so, on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security tried to reclaim the narrative by posting a still from tonight’s episode that pictures an ICE raid—alongside a link to join the federal agency. The official South Park X account replied, “Wait, so we ARE relevant?” before signing off with the hashtag, #eatabagofdicks.
Though a source familiar with the matter says the break was “preplanned,” the weeklong delay was surprising. South Park knows how to work swift—especially when reacting to up-to-date political intrigue. At the same time, it’s never been an uncomplicated series to pin down. South Park initially made a name for itself with contrarian, negative satire, arguably characterized by Stone saying, back in 2001, “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.” The Trump phenomenon challenged Parker and Stone to stake out a more evolved point of view—and a decade in, it seems as though they’re still trying to figure it out.
When asked to react to the buzzy premiere’s fallout at a San Diego Comic-Con panel last month, Parker deadpanned, “We’re terribly sorry.” Such cheeky evasion has been his and Stone’s defining quality as long as they’ve been making South Park. They want their stupid jokes and blatant provocations to speak for themselves, even when we’re dying to know what the two of them really think. That’s the original appeal, and controversy, of South Park—a portrait of filthy kids being filthy kids. In the ’90s and early 2000s, schools banned students from wearing clothing that referenced the sitcom. Parents’ groups constantly spoke out against it. Debates swirled around the 1999 movie’s rating, with the MPAA reportedly pushing for a prohibitive NC-17 label. (It was ultimately rated R). South Park’s fans have always loved how the show acts as a gleeful middle finger to authority, pummeling its way through different eras of American life.
Over the years, South Park has pissed off environmentalists (for depicting Al Gore as a delusional climate activist, which they apologized for years later) and the Muslim community (for a cartoon depiction of Muhammed, which Comedy Central ultimately censored). To inevitable outrage, white characters have said the N-word; straight characters have said the F-slur. The series considered President George W. Bush an incompetent moron and spoke out early against the post–September 11 US response in the Middle East. It’s laughed in the face of religious conservatism, often offending those groups most of all—way back in 2005, a Virgin Mary statue started “bleeding out her ass” in an episode called “Bloody Mary.” It’s also staked out surprising claims: More than a decade ago, the episode “Cissy” was hailed as a toasty, forward-thinking unpacking of trans issues.
Like he does with most things, Trump upended the show’s balance. South Park’s 19th season, which premiered in 2015, lampooned the rise of political correctness and “safe spaces” right alongside the rise of Trump, examining the dire state of polarization with a proudly weighty hand. Speaking with Vanity Fair two months before the 2016 election, Parker said he and Stone still weren’t sure how they felt about PC culture: “I don’t think that we came to any real answers.” And even back then, they sounded exhausted by the prospect of Trump as a subject. “We already did this Donald Trump episode,” Stone told VF. “And real life is outrunning satire this year.”
When Trump stunned the country with his election-night victory, the Emmy-winning sitcom pulled off a turnaround similarly remarkable to this season’s premiere—but this time, it wasn’t in the mood for jokes. Like a lot of people, Parker and Stone had assumed Hillary Clinton was about to become the first female president. The election’s actual outcome left their ever polarized fictional Colorado town in shock. It opens with a character bluntly remarking, “We learned that women can be anything—except for president.” The episode was titled, “Oh, Jeez.” The tone was tentative, anxious, vulnerable—an earnest exception to South Park’s usual nihilism.
During Trump’s first term, South Park still appeared uncertain about how to handle him. The show called out the up-to-date president as a xenophobe and an authoritarian, jabbed at his wild behavior on Twitter (now X), and reminded viewers of the allegations of sexual assault that continued to trail him (and which Trump has denied). Yet perhaps because South Park filtered its Trump critique through the character of Mr. Garrison—he’s been the show’s stand-in for the president until this season—Trump ignored it. At the same time, Trump opponents criticized those same episodes, claiming they echoed alt-right sentiments—particularly when South Park tackled workplace harassment and trans athletes. Naturally, the right-leaning website The Daily Wire celebrated the episode about trans athletes as one of South Park’s most “unleashed,” writing, “Pity the targets of the show’s satirical cudgel.” The show’s 2014 episode about trans rights felt like a distant memory.
South Park didn’t even try to tackle the 2024 election. Last September, Parker and Stone told me that they had intentionally decided to skip it. “I don’t know what more we could possibly say about Trump,” Parker said.
Clearly, over the intervening months, they changed their minds. With the Paramount situation forcing the longest break between up-to-date episodes in South Park’s history, Parker and Stone had a lot of thoughts to unload. (The creators did not respond to a request for comment.) They’re all bundled into “Sermon on the ’Mount,” a rapid response that feels like a return to form. But anyone in favor of the show’s apparent progressive shift should know not to get too comfortable. South Park still mostly plays as an equal-opportunity offender; it’s the uncommon comedy to generate genuine, consistently powerful reactions on both sides of the aisle.
And regardless of where the praise and backlash falls, Parker and Stone’s juvenile winkiness is still South Park’s calling card. That’s why their show can still pack a punch when it counts—but only when it has a personal itch to scratch, a score to settle, or a beam of satire to shoot straight from the gut. Parker and Stone depicted a vengeful US president in bed with the devil while lambasting their own lightning-rod of a network—then woke up the next day with smirks on their faces and the internet on fire. All they had to say was “sorry.” Nobody believes that endearingly adolescent lie—but we got the message all the same.
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